After Action Report: Sotheby's Emily Fisher Landau Evening Sale
The big estate of the season comes in for a soft landing at Sotheby's white-glove sale
In This Issue
The Dial: $406m total; 1.02 hammer ratio; 100% sell through rate
About Last Night: Sotheby’s anchors the season with confidence building sale
Charts: Results, Top Ten by Premium, Top Ten by Hammer Ratio
Notes: Unprotected lots; Asian participation; Records; Underbidders
Winners: Willem de Kooning, Agnes Martin, Mark Tansey
Performers: Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly
Losers: Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Richard Prince
The Dial
Sotheby’s Emily Fisher Landau Evening sale = $406m
About Last Night
We are at the stage in the art market’s economic cycle where an important theme running behind all of the auctions is preserving confidence in the art market. Auction houses don’t make money if they don’t have any art to sell. The performance of each season is as important to generating client engagement and providing market confidence to sellers and buyers as it is to generating operating margin and cash flow. Tonight, Sotheby’s invested in market by providing white glove sale of high-quality art. The effect of the sale will be hard to measure. We remain in lot picker’s market. Estimates need to come down further but that is a process that requires more time—or more pain. The more the auction houses are able to pull off these soft landings, the longer it will take to bring estimates down.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Artelligence to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.